The present inventive subject matter relates generally to the art of telecommunications. Particular but not exclusive relevance is found in connection with mobile telephones, and accordingly the present specification makes specific reference thereto. It is to be appreciated however that aspects of the present inventive subject matter are also equally amenable to other like applications.
It is not uncommon for people to routinely carry two mobile telephones, as well as having a number of fixed lines telephone, e.g., such as a work phone and a home phone. A person who carries multiple mobile phones may have bought one of the phones himself, for personal use and that may be billed to his personal account, and had a second phone given to him by his employer, which he uses for business and that may be billed to his employer's account. In many cases, either one of the two mobile phones may be fully capable of handling all of the person's communication services, i.e. voice calls, video calls, text messaging, and web browsing, so having multiple phones is a nuisance rather than a convenience; what the person may really want is to be able to carry a single mobile phone that can be used for both personal use as well as business use, but still have personal calls billed to the person's personal account, and work-related calls billed to his employer's account.
While a single mobile phone may be convenient and/or desirable to use, there may still be any number of reasons why a person would also want to have and use other telephones and/or telecommunication devices, e.g. home phones, office desk phones and/or work telephone, and/or a tablet, laptop or other computer, e.g., running a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) application. For example, while a tablet computer isn't as easy to carry around as a mobile phone, it has a much larger keyboard and video display than a mobile phone, and as a result, people may prefer to use a tablet rather than a mobile phone to watch videos or carry on a long text message exchange, assuming that the tablet is within easy reach. Fixed line work phones and home phones can only be used when the person is at that given location; however that could be a location where mobile phone service is not available. In addition, the person may prefer to use his home or work phone instead of his mobile phone because the sound quality of the fixed line phone may be noticeably better than his mobile phone. Accordingly, it may be desirable for a person to selectively use any of their phones for both personal and business use, and have the calls and other use billed to the proper account.
To solve the aforementioned problem, a conventional simultaneous ring service or feature may be used to ring a plurality telephones when a call is directed to the telephone subscribing to the service or feature. However, conventional simultaneous ring services may have certain limitations and/or drawbacks. For example, conventional simultaneous ring services are generally static, i.e., they do not response dynamically to individual calls. In this case, the designated telephones are generally rung each time a call is placed to the subscribing telephone regardless of any other criteria. This can be undesirable for any number of reasons. For example, ringing a particular telephone may not be desired at some times. Additionally, a user may have multiple telephones subscribing to a simultaneous ring feature, e.g., a work phone and a home phone. Presuming both simultaneous ring the user's mobile phone when either the work phone or the home phone is originally call, when a user answers a call on his mobile telephone, he may wish to know the number of the telephone that the call was originally placed to, e.g., his work phone number or his home phone number or his mobile phone number. A conventional simultaneous ring service may not provide this information. Additionally, if a mobile phone is one of the phones designated to be simultaneously rung but that mobile phone is not powered on at the time the user is called, the call leg to the mobile phone may be immediately forwarded to and automatically answered by the voicemail system set up for this mobile phone. Once the call leg to the mobile phone is answered, the call legs being simultaneously set up to the user's other phones are dropped. Since the call leg to the mobile phone is answered by the automated voice mail system so quickly, in most cases the user being called has no chance to answer the call on one of his fixed line phones, e.g. his work phone or his home phone, since the call legs to the fixed line phones are dropped.
Accordingly, a new and/or improved method, apparatus, mobile application and/or system is disclosed which addresses the above-referenced problem(s) and/or others.